Interesting. The immediate aftermath polls possibly didn't include his speech? I would expect a statisically significant bounce after that speech. But yes, the things he (Congress) managed to achieve after the election have done more for him than pretty much everything he did in the past 2 years.

These next 2 years could either be a poisoned chalice for the Republicans, or it could be the final nail in the Obama presidency coffin. The Republicans have the harder strategic road I think. The way the Republicans came out swinging after the election with all this aggressive talk of obstructing Obama at every turn looked like they might end up handing Obama another 4 years in office. If the Republicans fight Obama tooth and nail then Obama could make it look like a sore winner House, and an obstructionist Senate minority. If the Republicans end up working with Obama to get things done, then Obama looks like a president who can work well with Congress.

The Republicans need to essentially close down the presidency without coming off looking like the bad guys. Trouble is they need to convince the Senate to pass House Bills/measures for the president to get a look at them and given the Senate is still majority Democratic the Bills that get to Obama for signing aren't going to be so right wing that Obama will be vetoing all over the place. More than likely Obama will work with the moderates in Senate to water down hard right stuff coming out of the House into centre right stuff, which the president can sign without suffering too much damage with his base support. The fight will really be on when it comes to passing funding measures for things like the new Food Safety law. Starving the administration of funds is a possibly winning tactic for the Republicans, though it also comes with its electoral risks. With the Food safety law every foodborne illness outbreak that happens while the Republicans are blocking funding will weaken their position. And Foodborne illness outbreaks happen commonly enough that the obstructionist position could really blow up.

The game, as they say, is afoot.

yes but he inherited a deficit and turned it into a surplus.  clinton's overall debt was very small, bush's debt was insane, obama's debt might become worse.  clinton sent tons of jobs overseas too, he passed NAFTA, working conditions got worse.  It was a strong economy at the time though.  He does get too much credit, the economy probably would have been great anyway.  Basically clinton was not as bad as other presidents in recent times, i don't think he was great by any means.  Presidents still have to bow their heads to corporations and it's hard to blame them, they wouldn't be where they are without doing that.

20 years of unprecedented prosperity then 3 years of an economic down turn which is still better than where the economy started... I'll take that every time thank you very much. You can keep your go no where heavily regulated economy. 

There were polls taken right after the speech, but they didn't show a significant improvement. It was a good speech, probably the best I've ever seen from him, but it just didn't really change anyone's opinion.

I'd disagree on a couple of things:

First, the Republicans had historic wins in November despite all the screaming that they were obstructionist bastards. As P.J. O'Rourke put it, the public wanted a restraining order against the Democrats. Now that we have a split Congress, the Republicans will have to assume more responsibility for governing, but it's going to take all of Obama and the media's messaging power to successfully brand Republicans as running the show with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic White House.

Starving the administration of funds is going to be a tricky bit of business, though. For example, Republicans should aim for outright repeal of Obamacare. They won't get it, of course, but it will help keep voters on their side and it gives them an issue against Democrats in competitive districts in 2012 by putting them on record. After that fails, I really don't think they should try to tamper with it too much. The thing is absolute poison in my opinion, and has to be completely replaced. Changing things in a bill that no one has read and no one can explain or comprehend doesn't fix the problem at all, but defunding it only allows Obama to say, "Ah ha! All these problems are because the Republicans didn't allow us to implement the good things!"

On the other hand, if Obama decides to override Congress (the old Democratic Congress, that is) and bring Gitmo detainees to the U.S., and Republicans block the funds somehow... that will go just swimmingly. People are totally opposed to that shit, and it would be a replay of the Justice Department insisting on trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in NYC. That would be the complete opposite of what Obama wants right now. He's trying to triangulate and hover above the fray, but this would pit him against both parties and the majority of the public, and just make him look completely out of step.

So, yeah, the Republicans do have an uphill battle dethroning Obama in 2012, but I think it's going to be less about how the one Republican chamber of Congress behaves (although they can help or hurt) and more about finding a strong candidate. The one guy who would almost certainly cream Obama is Chris Christie, but he flat out refuses to run. Sucks for me; I would kill to see those debates. The rest of the likely candidates are a big, fat "meh" at this point.

Why would they pass NAFTA anyways? Doesn't that just encourage companies to move to Mexico, for cheaper wages? I agree with you though. It seems democrats do give too much credit to Clinton, and hate too much on Bush, while Republicans tend to hate on Clinton and act like Bush never existed lol.

1.)You are probably right. If people were happy during my presidency, and I did nothing, I would probably be re elected, but I was not asking for the theoretical opinion of what we think the American people would choose, I was asking for yours.

2.) Agreed.

3.)  Yet again, that is probably what the general population believes, but is that what you believe?

A generally accepted principle of economics is that free trade benefits both parties; and to explain it in a very simple way, trade between an advanced economy (US) and a developing economy (Mexico) enables the developing economy to rapidly grow by producing inexpensive unsophisticated goods/services while the advanced economy regains manufacturing/development capacity to build more sophisticated and advanced goods/services.

The problem the United States has faced over the past couple of decades is that their excess production capacity is really poorly suited to the advanced development jobs “of the future”. Once again to simplify this, the high-school dropout who gets drunk and high during his lunch hour may be able to assemble toasters, but no electronics company in their right mind would hire him to work to develop the precise components that make up modern goods; and he certainly lacks the education to work in the research and development of these products.

1.) what i believe? well as long as america sees a tiny bit of advancement and growth and the president did nothing i would re-elect them in no time. Im conservative but if things need to be fixed then they need to be fixed.

3.) I guess i believe it. For instance if america was doing great and I did nothing and it kept going great I would consider myself a great president. because if i changed anything it might've made things worse

Yeah, the Republicans in general just need to find a way to convey to the public that "hey even though we have  a majority in the house, the democrats are still in control with the Senate and the Presidency."

I don't think it's really in the house Republicans best interest to be obstructionary, but do the opposite and pass a LOT of stuff that they know has no chance of passing in the Senate, and some things they can get passed in the Senate that Obama will veto.

That's why they are pushing ahead with the healthcare repeal afterall, knowing that it won't pass the senate and even if it did they don't have enough for an override.

I'd guess because nobody saw it and it was covered poorly.

I didn't watch it and had no idea till this morning that he actually chided both sides for pushing the blame on this on both sides.   All I heard covered was the call for civility.  Which even when you throw in a "both sides" message in, often comes off as a wink and a nudge type manuever.